Field Trip!

A few weeks back, we took at trip to the Hammer, in Westwood, to check out a retrospective of the work of conceptual artist Allen Ruppersberg. Much of what students in VVP do is consonant, in spirit, with Ruppersberg's endlessly inventive and often quite comic work. An example is the piece above, called The Singing Posters, which is comprised of a couple hundred brightly colored commercial posters printed with a phonetic transcription of Allen Ginsberg's "Howl." Other installations (there were so many!) included comic books hanging on strings we were invited to peruse, and a hall way created to resemble one from the high school Ruppersberg attended, complete with classroom doors through which, if you pressed your ear close, you could listen to the teachers lecturing on philosophy or science or what have you. Absolutely worth an afternoon.

After the students scattered around Westwood for lunch, we reconvened at Upside Down, a new coffee and art gallery space. The remarkable photographs of recent Biola phtot grad Lu Zhang were hanging on the walls.

It was, in short, a wonderful day--a reminder of what's right at our fingertips here in L.A.